Introduction
Drive for muscularity is defined as a desire to develop a visible muscular physique by both increasing muscle mass and decreasing body fat, in order to achieve a muscular upper body and a narrow waist [
1‐
3]. Striving to attain a muscular ideal body gets affected individuals to highly engage in appearance-related cognitions and various muscularity-building behaviors [
4‐
6]. Men who desire valorized musculatures are at risk to develop multiple psychological and physical health consequences. More specifically, drive for muscularity was found to relate to depression, anxiety, decreased self-esteem, and substance use intentions [
5,
7,
8]. Men driven to achieve an idealized muscular body are also more prone to use steroids [
7], to report exercise dependence [
9], disordered eating [
10] and bulimic symptoms [
10,
11]. All these negative consequences highlight the crucial necessity for adequate management of drive for muscularity. Drive for muscularity can be successfully managed and treated when properly captured and timely diagnosed [
12]. However, there is some evidence to suggest that muscularity-oriented disordered eating and body image in males are still largely misunderstood by clinicians, underdiagnosed and undertreated [
13]. These problems remain also underreported by males, partly because of stigma and shame attached to them [
14]; which often lead to reluctance to seek help and substantial delays to care [
15,
16]. Hence, early screening and assessment for drive for muscularity is of great importance, as it could be the key to detect the problem as early as possible and successfully manage it before symptoms become disabling.
No gold-standard measure of the drive for muscularity exists [
17]. Several measures exist to evaluate the drive for muscularity construct, such as the Drive for Muscularity Attitudes Questionnaire (DMAQ; [
18]), the Swansea Muscularity Attitudes Questionnaire (SMAQ; [
19]), and the Drive for Muscularity Scale (DMS; [
20]). In this study, we chose to validate the Arabic version of the DMS, given that it is the most commonly used measure to assess drive for muscularity (70% of studies [
21]). The DMS is a self-report measure composed of 15 items that are rated on a 6-point Likert-type scale (from 1 “always” to 6 “never”). The original developers obtained a structure of two factors, each one composed of 7 items (i.e., Muscularity Body Dissatisfaction and Muscularity Behaviors) in a sample of North American men [
22]. The Muscularity Body Dissatisfaction subscale reflects one’s “attitudes” toward muscle-oriented body image, while the Muscularity Behaviors subscale reflects engaging in “behaviors” that promote a gain in muscle mass [
22]. One item (#10: “I think about taking anabolic steroids”) was found to have very little variability and was omitted from the subscale calculations [
22]. Higher total scores are indicative of more pronounced attitudes and behaviors of drive for muscularity. With regard to the DMS factor structure, the same study by McCreary et al. (2004) [
22] has shown that, for men, researchers can compute separate attitude and behavioral subscale scores and an overall DMS score. However, for women, only the overall DMS score can be computed.
Since its development, the DMS has been translated in different languages and adapted to different countries and languages, including Spanish [
23,
24], Italian [
25], German [
26], Portuguese [
27], Romanian [
28], Turkish [
29], Persian [
30], Lithuanian [
31], Malay [
32], Brazilian [
33], and Chinese [
34]. The DMS has also been validated in various populations, including university students men [
20,
28], young adult women [
35], sexual minority men and women [
36,
37], weightlifters [
38], and bodybuilders [
30]. All these versions provided empirical support to the good psychometric characteristics of the DMS, by showing an adequate internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha > 0.70) and confirming its original 2-factor structure (attitudes and behaviors) [
39]. It is of note, however, that the vast majority of evidence was originated from exclusively men samples [
39]. The very limited attempts to validate the measure in women samples (e.g., [
22,
40,
41]) failed to support the factor model suggested in the parent version and consistently described in men; thus questioning the factorial validity of the scale and its invariance across gender groups. Other psychometric characteristics have also been supported, including test–retest reliability [
3,
26,
31], and good convergent validity as evidenced through significant correlations with other relevant constructs (e.g., body image dissatisfaction [
23,
42], self-esteem [
1,
20,
31,
32], muscle discrepancy [
32], BMI [
31,
32], disordered eating attitudes/behaviors [
1,
20,
31], and psychological distress [
1,
38]).
Although the 15-item DMS has been widely validated and extensively used in diverse research and clinical settings, and the findings that it relates to different relevant constructs (e.g., socio-demographic variables, drive for thinness, drive for leanness) [
3], this original version was not theoretically driven [
43]. Indeed, despite attempts to conceptualize the scale on two separate dimensions, there is a lack of clarity surrounding this conceptualization. For instance, the Muscularity Attitudes subscale includes items referring to various theoretical constructs, such as self-efficacy (e.g., “I think that I would feel stronger if I gained a little more muscle mass”) or subjective norms/social approval (e.g., “Other people think I work out with weights too often”). To fill these gaps, Chaba et al. [
43] sought to establish a more theoretically based scale that replicates the original DMS subscales with a better conceptual clarity and a shorter number of items. To this end, they developed a preliminary version based on both the literature on the drive for muscularity and the first version of the DMS, and investigated its factor structure with principal component analysis in a sample of 114 male athletes [
43]. This has led to a nine-item scale that demonstrated good psychometric properties using series of structural hypothetical modelisation in another sample of 129 male athletes [
43]. The short 9-item DMS (DMS-9) was therefore shown to be conceptualized on two theoretical factors, Muscularity Body Dissatisfaction and Muscularity Behaviors [
43]. Given that this new version of the scale is theoretically sounder, it has the potential to offer a clearer approach to understanding the drive for muscularity construct. In addition, due to its shortness, the DMS-9 allows for easier use, shorter administration time, less respondents’ burden and lower cost compared to the original form.
Rationale of the present study
To date, no Arabic validation of the DMS exists to the best of our knowledge. Although research on disordered eating and body image disturbances has been widely developed in the Western world, the generalized globalization and westernization contributed to a rise in prevalence rates of these manifestations in people from non-Western cultures even exceeding those seen in Western people [
44,
45]. Research has, for example, documented a growing prevalence of maladaptive eating-related attitudes and behaviors in the Arab world [
46,
47]. Despite this evidence, little attention has been devoted so far to this topic in Arab countries; which is partly due to a lack of sensitive measures to detect manifestations of muscularity-oriented nature in Arabic-speaking populations [
48]. Available instruments in the Arabic language are rather thinness-focused, such as the Eating Attitude Test [
49,
50], the Eating disorder examination questionnaire [
51,
52], the Inflexible Eating Questionnaire (IEQ) [
53], the Nine Item Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder Screen (NIAS) [
54], the Intuitive Eating Scale [
55], and the Eating Disorder Inventory [
56,
57]. The only muscularity-specific measure that has recently been validated in Arabic is the Muscle Dysmorphic Disorder Inventory [
58]. In addition, studies on body dissatisfaction involving Arab men samples are scarce, with a great majority of research having been performed among women [
59], and having used “non-validated assessment tools” [
60]. This emphasizes the strong need for providing valid and reliable measures to assess muscularity-oriented body dissatisfaction for the Arabic-speaking population.
Through the present study, we sought to contribute to the literature especially under the Arab context, by investigating the psychometric properties of an Arabic translation of the short 9-item DMS in a sample of Arabic-speaking Lebanese university students of both genders. As mentioned above, we chose the DMS-9 because of its better conceptual clarity and good psychometric qualities [
43]. Besides, this version offers potential advantages of reducing the administration time, burden, and costs. We hypothesized that the Arabic version of the DMS-9 would show good internal consistency and retain the parent two-factor structure. We also expected that the Arabic DMS’s convergent validity would be established by demonstrating theoretically coherent patterns of correlations with muscle bias internalization, muscle dysmorphic disorder, body appreciation, and disordered eating symptoms.
Discussion
The present study was conducted with the aim of making available an Arabic psychometrically sound measure to assess drive for muscularity, i.e. the short 9-item DMS. The Arabic version was found to have excellent psychometric properties in terms of factorial structure, internal consistency, gender invariance, and convergent/divergent validity. These findings preliminarily suggest that the Arabic DMS is a simple, easy to use, and economic self-report scale for the reliable and valid assessment of drive for muscularity among Arabic-speaking community people.
Using an EFA-to-CFA strategy as recommended in the literature [
73], we found that the original two-factor model of the DMS proposed in the parent study [
22] was adequately replicated in our sample; suggesting that this structure is appropriate for the Arabic-speaking population. In agreement with our findings, most of the linguistic validations of the DMS confirmed the originally proposed two-factor structure, including the Spanish [
20], German [
26], Malay [
32], and Mexican versions [
24]. Nevertheless, findings on factorial validity of the DMS seem to be conflicting. Some studies, indeed, failed to support this model; and rather recommended the use of the general scale (e.g., [
31]). Other researchers attempted to test a hypothesized three-factor model (e.g., [
24,
27]). Other translation studies demonstrated the good internal consistency of the DMS but omitted to explore its factor structure (e.g., Swedish [
93] Icelandic [
94], French [
95]). Finally, and as previously mentioned, evidence for the two-factor model mainly derived from men samples [
39]; while those involving women did not confirm this model (e.g., [
22,
40,
41]).
The two DMS-9 factor scores showed very good McDonald’s omega values (ω > 0.8), higher than the 0.70 threshold value of good internal consistency suggested by previous researchers [
96,
97], thus suggesting that the present Arabic version of the DMS appears to offer a reliable measure of drive for muscularity manifestations. These findings are consistent with the original validation of the short 9-item DMS, which revealed a Cronbach’s alphas for the Muscularity Behaviors and the Muscularity Body Dissatisfaction subscales of 0.88 and 0.87, respectively [
43]. Overall, the present results corroborate previous evidence that the DMS is consistently reliable [
39]. Beyond reliability, our study is among the first to examine measurement invariance of the DMS across men and women, in a relatively proportionate sample of adults according to gender (51.4% women in the first sample and 48.6% women in the second sample). Despite evidence showing that drive for muscularity could manifest among females [
98‐
100], gender-related aspects with regard to this entity have long been neglected. This has led Kling et al. [
39] to call in their systematic review for future studies extending investigations of the construct beyond men samples, and examining cross-gender invariance of the DMS. Findings showed that gender invariance was achieved at the configural, metric, and scalar levels. These findings suggest that items are interpreted by, and applicable to men and women in the same manner; thus allowing for valid gender comparisons in future research. Additional studies are warranted to replicate and confirm these findings.
Finally, DMS-9 scores correlated in the expected way with other study variables, providing support for the convergent and divergent validity of the Arabic version of the scale. Specifically, we found that greater drive for muscularity attitudes and behaviors significantly correlated with more severe muscle dysmorphic symptoms, inappropriate eating attitudes, muscle bias internalization, and lower body appreciation. These results align with previous evidence. Similar evidence for validity of the DMS-9 through the same patterns of correlations with these variables has previously been reported in other validation studies (e.g., disordered eating attitudes/behaviors [
1,
20,
31], body image dissatisfaction [
23,
42,
43], muscle dysmorphic disorder [
33,
101]). These data further highlight the clinical relevance of the drive for muscularity construct, and suggests that efforts to help people address this issue may be beneficial for their health and well-being [
5].
Limitations
Some limitations should be acknowledged. First, our data were collected following convenience sampling and a web-based survey; which might limit the generalization of our conclusions. Information is present in all cross-sectional studies. We could not verify if a participant took the survey more than once. Moreover, linguistic invariance was not studied; the scale should be tested for being valid and reliable to use in other Arab countries due to the complexity of the Arabic language and its vernacular forms. More validation studies still need to confirm the robustness of the Arabic DMS-9 in specific groups (such as Arabic-speaking athletes, bodybuilder and sexual minority individuals). In addition, future cross-national validations in samples from different Arab countries are required to provide support to the cross-cultural validity of the scale. Finally, other important psychometric properties have not been addressed in this paper (e.g., test-retest reliability, construct validity) and should be verified in future research.
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